John Sandford (1) (1944–)

While I do love crime novels, and police procedurals in particular, a policeman who drives a Porsche at work as main character usually would raise a big red flag for me; add to that that said main character also is a successful womanizer, I'd have shelved the series under "James Bond as policeman" and kept well away from it.

However, John Sandford's "Lucas Davenport" series not only got a lot of good to excellent reviews, but a lot of considered good to excellent reviews (i.e. going into rather more depth than "Hey people, I liked this!") so when I saw the novels for cheap, I thought I'd give it a try and snagged a couple of them. I read the first one a few months back, and while I was not terribly keen on it, it was okay - a mostly run-of-the-mill serial killer novel (a genre I am in general not terribly fond of), but well written and very entertaining - and interesting enough that I continued in the series, now having read the second volume. Which turned out to be quite a step up in quality.

I was pleasantly surprised right from the start: One of the pecularities of this series is apparently that you always know who the murderer is from the beginning on, and then basically follow their perspective in parallel to that of the main protagonist. While Rules of Prey had the usual psychopathic murderer as its protagonist, Shadow Prey presents us with a group of Indians who have legitimate grievances towards their victims and (apart from their somewhat extreme way of conflict resolution) are quite rational and generally refreshingly normal people. The novel as a whole is fairly sympathetic to their cause (if not necessarily to their methods), and towars the end of the volume, when they were attacking their main target, I found myself rooting for the supposed villains (which I am quite sure is what the author was aiming for).

The novel's protagonist Lucas Davenport also is quite far from your inhumanely perfect James Bond type. Yes, he is a womanizer, and in the course of the novel has an intense affair with a colleague who simply cannot resist him - but both already are in a relation and they both agonise over the moral implications of their affair, and its consequences. And talking about consequences - relatively early in the novel Davenport only narrowly escapes a life-threatening situation and instead of simply brushing it off like James Bond (or pretty much any other thriller protagonist) would have done, is severaly affected by it and keeps having flashbacks to it throughout the rest of the novel. Which leaves the Porsche, which I am still very ho-hum about - but at least Sandford has his hero worry about insurance when the car gets hits by bullets. In short, for the hero of a thriller novel, Davenport feels surprisingly real and relatable which for me at least made the novel a lot more enjoyable than I had expected.

Unfortunately, Sandford does not quite pull it off over the whole length of the novel - eventually, a psychopathic killer pops up, as their of course has to be, and of course he attacks the protagonist's love interest (both of them, actually). It is not quite knight-in-shining-armour stuff, so could have been worse, but did spoil the novel for me a bit. Even so, this was undeniably a compulsive read with a lot of genre-atypical concepts and fresh ideas to keep me interested. And it's still early in the series, so hopefully there will be further improvement in the subsequent volumes.… (more)

Read only if:

1. You're John Sandford's A Number One Fan.


2. You are a completionist and must read every book in the Lucas Davenport series.


3. You're secretly in love with/wish you were Sonny Crockett, a spiffy dressed Extra Special Maverick Detective who loves clothes and women in equal proportions, with fast cars a close third.


4. You never tire of the serial killer character and their 'games' with the police.


5. You have no problem with detectives sexing the recent victim of an attempted rape/homicide.


6. You are stuck in Newark Airport and this is the only book available.… (more)